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Caleb x reading (tap for better res on mobile)

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[Utena] a single perpetual motion machine

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I know most people don't care about anything unless it has to do with the U.S. but can we please start talking about the Canadian election.

Please don't vote for Poilievre. He's basically the Canadian Trump and plans to put in place laws that harm trans youth, and lots of other shit.

Please vote istg this is the only way anything will get better. Poilievre has been kissing millionaires and billionaires asses. He'll make life even harder, and he loves Trump.

Reblogs are appreciated, especially if you aren't Canadian.

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Hanto rly said I like you fr not contextual or subtle or whatever queerbaiting this time for my toku show???

Tf did Hanto say is that supposed to be a love confession or what

Wtf wtf wtf wtf

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The Husty Brothers ( Gira and Racules ) plz :3

"The cloak suits him."

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the thellth theathellth on the theathore

Maglor: She sells seashells on the seashore :)

Fëanor: TRAITOR

Maglor, crying: Forgive me! I forgot about--

Fëanor: DO IT AGAIN. DO IT RIGHT.

Maglor, through tears: the thells theathells on the thea thore...

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look man. look

essek saying "bren" out loud, claiming a position on caleb's side as the mouthpiece of his regards to astrid, did something to me. i can't tell if it opened a wound or punched me or gave me a hug. all i know is that i am feeling so many emotions right now

more under the cut because i'm about to get rambly:

"bren aldric ermendrud" is a separate character from caleb widogast. he's a young boy learning how to make magic. he's a deeply traumatized and indoctrinated teenager. he's the boy who curled up with astrid and eadwulf in a freezing tower for warmth all night.

essek never met bren. he met caleb and he's never known him as anyone else. if i'm remembering correctly, caleb never even said the name "bren" to him during the campaign, and neither did any of the nein.

essek knows caleb widogast. he knows the man who held up the object of his worst crime and then kissed him in the bowels of a ship and made a floor of infinite stars for them to walk through together. he knows the person who healed over bren's wounds—thinly, but enough. he knows the man that the boy has become.

astrid knows bren. she barely knows who caleb is. she still calls him bren after hearing him referred to as caleb repeatedly. she can't know him as the man he is, she only knows the boy. there's some of bren in caleb, but there is no caleb in bren.

essek saying "bren sends his regards" is him gauging astrid's reaction, on one level—if she freaks out, which she did, she's in opposition to caleb's cause and thus a threat. on another level, it's essek delivering a very different subtextual message from caleb: "the boy who loved you is giving you one final warning."

because essek is a threat to astrid. their last meaningful interaction was slinging spells at each other in the blooming grove. and that's funny in a "current boyfriend vs ex girlfriend exclusively fight each other" kind of way, but it's also deeply tied to caleb's recurring theme of transformation. "bren sends his regards" also means "i have healed enough to love enough for someone else to know this name and use it with my consent. and this someone else is your enemy. what does that make you think i've become?"

it also does a fantastic job of communicating subtle offscreen discussions that have happened over the years since the end of c2. we don't have the details of when or how caleb told essek his birth name, but we know that he did, and we know from all of c2 that the name bren occupies a place of immense emotional weight for caleb. it functions similarly to a deadname in terms of who uses it and for what purpose. trent exclusively calls caleb bren to wound him and place himself in a position of power. astrid calls him bren to remind both him and herself of who they used to be—same with eadwulf, though obviously he's not here.

the first time we hear essek say "bren" is on caleb's behalf and confronting one of the narrative representations of caleb's trauma. it's four words that manage to communicate "i, your enemy on a hundred levels, can speak for both the man i love and the boy who loved you, because i know him in his entirety."

astrid knows bren and essek knows caleb, but only essek can speak for both. because at some point, caleb gave bren to essek. and we know this from four words. four IMPROVISED words.

god. this moment is just so fucking good

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I just rewatched gintama episode 27 after over 10 years. When I watched it the last time, it was just a sad story where our dummies had a chance to be more serious. But now I see what this episode really is. It is gintoki’s second chance. The children could have been used to force Rengokukan to surrender, or they could have been lost while seeking revenge against Tendoshuu. They are a parallel to the shouka sonjuku. Gintoki saw the past selves of himself and his friends knocking on his door and begging him for help. So he made sure they had a chance to escape. He destroyed the organization that caused their father’s tragedy. He saved them from his own worst trauma. It is his second chance to redo what he could not change with his own past. And he did it

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Something so interesting about gintoki is that he like already was a shonen hero, before gintama even starts. Like he was an orphan with a cool teacher and a ragtag group of friends. He fought in the war and became known as the shiroyasha through his teen years. And then we meet him as an adult. After the story has kind of ended. Where it begins instead is: ok, you did the shonen hero thing. Who comes out the other side? What are you after the credits roll? When you have to pay rent? What kind of adult do you want to be?

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I've been rewatching Gintama with a bit more perspective, and something that is standing out to me in these early episodes is that Gintoki is really quite young. He matures throughout the series (impossible not to, after taking in two teens), but at this point in the series, he's really, really young. Like he says, there's a child in him. Someone small and fragile, and very alone. And although he plays it up as a joke, I think part of it is that he defaults to this sort of immaturity as a shield. After all he has gone through, this is his answer.

It's only after he meets Shinpachi that he starts to come out of that shell he created for himself and I'm having a lot of feelings about this. He's suffered so much.

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identity crisis

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The List randomizer is really creating the most unfair choices for us!!

(generak post here / tag for all round one polls here)

Choose which one of these two romances will get to the next roun!

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putting everything else aside, i have sincere gratitude for liam o’brien and matthew mercer for giving me two characters irrevocably held together by the idea that we are not born with venom in our veins - we learn it, and we can unlearn it, and we can save ourselves. love absolutely can be enough

i fucking needed caleb and essek, and i didn’t realize how much i needed them until i had them.  what an incredible ride it’s been

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I just finished my first play through of Stray Gods, and I do genuinely love the game for many reasons and it really does encompass a lot of my favourite things (greek mythology, musicals, voice actors, game mechanics etc).

But also... ~women~

I am being so normal about Persephone.

[ID: 9 pictures of Persephone from the Stray Gods game.]

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do we think soltryce professors wear "traditional" wizard robes as a dress code. like soltryce prof business casual is probably wizard robes. caleb would not follow that. his students go thru like three classes where the profs are dressed like normal wizards and then walk into caleb "combat ready is my business casual" widogasts room, book holsters stormrider boots and all

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hhhrrgrgrgggghh beau taking caleb aside and telling him. youve worked so hard. you've grown so much. dont let him get into your head.

caleb saying. i dont mind him taunting me. but he doesn't need to be breathing anymore.

and beau- not doubting, unwavering, watching his back, keeping him straight, always. you know we're walking into a trap, right?

(the unspoken answer. of course.)

(the unspoken implication. im coming with you anyway. we all are. of course we are. i just needed to ask.)

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Oh damn trent